February 23rd, 2012

This is the first in what will probably -HAHAHAHAHAHAHA – be a series of regular, if shortish posts about good, scary moments in superhero books.

This week:

From Dante’s Inferno and Fungus the Bogeyman to the much maligned, because capriciously fatal, Chasms of Malice the megadungeon has, for me, an eternal appeal. But because I’ve always found it such a comforting fictional environment, films like 127 Hours and Touching The Void really fuck with my head. They take the safe, endlessly sheltered, endlessly contained and controlled space and aggressively insist it’s anything but. The endless shelter, the roofing, becomes nothing but a granite sky as uncaring, if not moreso, than the one in the stock quote. Because unlike the sky above us it can cave in, trap arms, pulverise shins. Can go on forever…. until it tapers into a little hole where the star of The Descent is still trapped, alone, left to rot and go mad in the dark. Dungeons jostle about like this in all our minds, I think. Humans seek refuge. We instantly anthropomorphise enclosed spaces. Potential homes. But they may resist us. Perhaps they *are* homes – but not ours. Filled with… things.

(clicky to embiggen)

Which is why Riveira’s imagery and Waid’s script are so good. They contains both possibilities.

Those familiar with my writing will know I share a love of the Marvel Monsters of yesteryear with artists like Charles Burns (by whom, I think, this image is inspired as much it is by Jack Kirby) and no doubt everyone else, the roots of which infatuation lie in the tension between the silly and the absurd and the unknowable abject horror battling for supremacy over these behorn-ed and fanged spaces. Nostalgia veering into dread. Because maybe Marvel was never a safe space. And that certainly comes into play here. It’s a key element to what makes these panels so effective. From a certain angle the monsters look dumb and kind of friendly, but those ‘creepy cartoon eyes’ would make you sick if you were confronted with them anywhere outside the comic page.

And obviously this is heightened by the broader context of Mark Waid’s comic. Daredevil (especially this Daredevil, shorn of the banal bleatings of the wider MU, unshackled, so far, by mega events emanating from both within or without) is a book that has traditionally had a tighter, dare I say it, more ‘realistic’ focus. Daredevil’s natural environment is The Streets, his enemies gangsters, assassins and low rent supercrooks. As with Batman, the character’s defining era was presided over by Frank Miller, who brought to the book ever enduring hardboiled concerns, aided and abetted by David Mazuchelli of whose art Riveira’s is a not so distant echo. And so it’s no surprise that, as with this story’s closest correlate I can think of right now, the post Typhoid Mary Inferno arc of the late Eighties, it comes as something of a shock to find Daredevil braving the underworld and the kind of creatures the FF would normally be fighting. World’s collide uneasily here, and it seems right that the second panel should reframe these beasties as the wayward inky weirdness they always were in their beating unhearts of unhearts but which somewhere along the way has been ground out of them by the wonder-pummeling pens of Marvel’s current stable of massively mandated writer-monkeys. In fact part of me can’t help but read the panel in question as one composed of panels past, a hallway of grotesque portraits through which our blind hero obliviously surfs. It’s almost though Waid and Riveira are saying: ‘Look! Look at these things! Remember these things! Before they were explained or rationalised or given back-stories! Look at them! Remember how WRONG they were!’

No more words, just the terrible reality hanging there uncontextualised. You can never hope to explain anything about ANYTHING that looks like these fucking things. You tried. You gave it your best shot. You thought you named the demon, that you laid Sadako to rest, etc.

But the bell still tolls for that dreadful day.

I also dig the metaphorical connotations embedded in the imagery. From Matt’s inability to read texts to his failure to properly disguise himself in the issue currently under discussion, blindness, whilst not exactly a plot point, has been a theme returned to again and again during Waid’s run. And here we have a perfect pictoral description, albeit via rabid fantasy, of the world as it’s perceived by many people with sight loss – a hostile, precarious world, where one false step, if not into a churning subterranean river but down the stairs or into the road, can lead to death or injury – and the small raft of safety upon which the visually impaired are balanced (in this case, aptly, a coffin) in any situation they enter into where the geography and variables are unknown. And around them, in all that endless dark, Monsters, always there, undetected (as in the first panel) by their limited sense range. This panel wouldn’t have half the charge it we weren’t aware of Daredevil’s visual impairment. And the hero wouldn’t seem half as brave.

This kind of takes me to where I want to wrap up, actually. Full circle, back to the glorious tension contained in the panels’ juxtaposition. Because as I mentioned above, in one panel the monsters are there and in the other they’re not. The in-story explanation for this is, of course, that Murdoch’s supersenses fail to pick them up. But what does that mean beyond the cool idea that these things are radar invisible, a sophisticated survival trait for creatures living in an environment where nothing relies on its eyes to find its dinner? Are they more rock than flesh, these dirt-whales, sewage hydras and gargoyles de terre with their Slow Vision, burrowing fins and wings powerful enough to beat through packed earth? Are they not conceived, but hewn? Erupted not birthed? Time is slower here. Imagine a sculpture of a sea monster turning to face its prey, silently roaring, over the course of a hundred years. Their wild hunts take eons.

Or was it just a simulacrum after all? The Earth’s heaving briefly imparting to it the illusion of life.

Perhaps the tunnel was always empty. Just Caves. Those eyes really are dead. The bellowing mouths just fissures.

…though there might be some HOTT dead lady action on the villain front!

You’re dead right though, The Beast Must Die, this issue is great because it does “dark” while still expanding the range of Daredevil stories.

Also, in related news, great post amy! I’m glad you’ve zoomed in on the way this scene uses DeeDee’s supersenses – Waid and co have played with this really lightly and cleverly throughout their run, and it’s a pleasure to see them using it for such eerie purposes.

My favourite thing about these monsters is how cuddly they look, so I’m glad you mentioned that and that doesn’t stop them being properly fucking freaky. You wouldn’t want them to break out of their kids book prison, would you? Eh? Eh?! EH?!!! Nice Fungus the Bogeyman shout too!

From The Radio Times to B-grade A Level essays openings such as these have masked a lack of anything to say since time immemorial…

So are there dungeons (mega or otherwise)in The Divine Comedy? And Fungus the Bogeyman?

Poodle – I had no idea how much classical literature you’ve read. You never mention it when I see you. You’ve apparently mentioned some stuff about Plato on here in the past and I pretty positive you’ve not read any…

You’re a very nice man who’s probably got interesting things to say. No need to wrap it in cliche and pretension is there?

The megadungeon is pretty much a D&D term. It just refers to a fuck off huge underground space, probably with monsters in it. Hell qualifies. So does Fungus’s home. Nothing classical about it.

As for Plato, I have read some, studied it in fact, but it was a long time ago, and, yeah, I may well misremember it sometimes. But I don’t think I’ve ever strayed into territory I wasn’t at least half familiar with. Never gone futher than his embedded essentialism/ideal forms, have I? At least I don’t think I have.

Would also like to point out that the Superhero horror posts are just musings on my own responses to panels/sequences, trying to figure out what I like about them. What I find eerie or unsettling about them. There’s no attempt at pretense.

No need to throw that “just” in there poodle, it’s pretty clear what this post is, which is why I find myself thinking that Steven Peterson’s take on it might best be described as total pish.

Steven… Stevie-P… Stevo… Steve – You might not be a big fan of the way poodle dances, but I think you’re stretching it a bit to suggest that he’s not saying anything here. I thought this post made some good points about how this scene used Daredevil’s super-blindness in a relatively fresh and spooky way, and while these points might be rooted in the amypoodle experience, that’s no bad thing as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve enjoyed many comics a whole lot more because poodle’s shared a little bit of his perspective on them with me, and Daredevil #9 is no exception.

I was only commenting on the opening cos that’s all I read. I’ve no interest in the comics being discussed.

I don’t hate everything you lot do, Zom – stop being so sensitive and dramatic. I’ve barely even read any of this blog ever. But people can sometimes, er, get a bit carried away with themselves when they’re doing their “being a writer” thing.

It’s not just him, I’m sure. And any bullshit-alarm that gets set off in my head might actually be useful to you. Or not. But it’s worth saying.

I mean, for example, is the term “megadungeon” (something I assumed was a D+D term alone) really best described by referencing Dante? Or does that just make you come across to strangers as erudite? Are you in fact hoping that readers will not know what you’re talking about? Two question worth honestly considering.

It’s not just more of “all that E M Forster crap” [balls - can't do the hyperlink to E M Forster's wikipedia page] is it?

Maybe that’s an overstatement, but you’ve given me zero reason to think otherwise. While we’re all being honest, I don’t particularly care whether you like anything here or not – cartoons aside I’d be genuinely surprised if you did – I just think that tough criticism offered by friends is probably best done face to face and not on a public website as it’s the sort of thing that’s inclined to upset people.

But if the bullshittery is a public behaviour, done for public reasons why not have some of the bullshittery-reaction happen publicly?

If my reaction is silly or irrelevant or misguided or untrue then it will be so publicly. And let’s be honest – it just has more weight if it’s said here, doesn’t it?

“I don’t particularly care whether you like anything here or not”

Really? Blimey.

It’s inclined to upset people? Well not much and not for long if they’re not being really very silly. I personally love people I know and respect to be open and critical with me. Bit of grit for the old oysters, no? (And Amy has plenty of shiny oyster-potential in him, doesn’t he?).

Lots of things don’t upset people for long, doesn’t mean we should do them even if they’re well meant.

Also, do you really think that’s generalisable assertion? It depends very much on the detail, if you ask me.

And, no, of course I don’t particularly care. Yeah, I might care a tiny bit, but comics are a world that you’ve never had much interest in, you mostly dislike opinion pieces, and you’ve never expressed much in the way of enthusiasm for what we do here. I could say almost exactly the same about my wife, and I don’t much care what she thinks of the content of the site either. It would be nice if you both loved it, but it’s absolutely fine that you don’t. I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over it.

There’s no way I’m going to convince you that rocking up and hurling some tough criticism to an old friend isn’t okay – probably healthy and good and reasonable and all those special things – so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that. Just know that it’s not the criticism that bothers me – you’re well aware that I think open, honest thought is a good thing – it’s the who and the how and the where of it.

What an odd thing to snark about; if nothing else, Dante is referenced in such a wide variety of situations that it barely counts as “erudite,” which is some pretty balls anti-intellectualist criticism if I ever saw it. People are allowed to draw connections between different forms of media regardless of what “brow” classification some dingus has decided they fall under, it keeps discussion fresh and reminds us not to denigrate things like, say, comics.

Poodle: Thank you for a lovely little post. The horror underlying super-hero comics is one of my favourite aspects of the genre, and this was an excellent issue of Daredevil to look at regarding it. Waid’s been doing some interesting thing with the series, which has mere whiffs of Silver Age revival but mostly underlines the sheer crazy of the Marvel Universe, always putting pressure on the borders of Murdock’s corner of New York.

The where is: On the “comments” section just underneath the blog entry I had a comment about. When you’ve got a comment about a blog post it could really be argued that the “comments” section under that blog post was, in fact, the perfect place for such a comment.

“What an odd thing to snark about; if nothing else, Dante is referenced in such a wide variety of situations that it barely counts as “erudite,” which is some pretty balls anti-intellectualist criticism if I ever saw it. People are allowed to draw connections between different forms of media regardless of what “brow” classification some dingus has decided they fall under, it keeps discussion fresh and reminds us not to denigrate things like, say, comics.”

Is every criticism of any comics (even really shite ones) or anything relating to comics always heard by comics fans as snobbish crap about low and high brow?

(I think some comics are superb, by the way. Superhero comics, however, seem to only be read by adults that read them as kids. But this is irrelevant).

I just am not sure that The Inferno or Fungus the Bogeyman have dungeons in them. Or megadungeons. And I’m not sure that Amypoodle has really always had a fascination with them since The Dawn Of Time. If that’s what he meant. Or maybe he was merely reporting on the eternal fascination that we all have with them (which he may or may not have shared).

Anyway it’s only weird and snarky cos I actually know him as a person. I’m a friend being snarky and naggy – I wouldn’t give a monkey’s if it was someone I didn’t know.

Stevie-P – The comments section is for comments, no doubt, but I don’t think you get to play the “I’m just a guy called Steve Peterson leaving a comment in the megadungeon!” card when your attempt at constructive criticism was reliant on your estimation of what amypoodle has and hasn’t read, based on the fact that you know him in the flesh.

Now you’ve already got yr little “I just wanted to show off that actually KNEW amypoodle” line in there, but that’s not what anyone was saying, so like I said before – naw big man. Just naw.

Also, I think it’s a little rich for you to be slagging poodle off for riffing on stuff you don’t think he’s read when you’ve not even bothered to read through the post to find out if the opening was indeed masking “a lack of anything to say”, y’know?

I still think you’re wrong about the opening too. I’ve not read any Dante so that reference only communicated to me via shorthand (and like Papers said, I don’t think this really qualifies as an attempt at looking big and clever), but the Fungus the Bogeyman riff brought to mind just the right sort of cosy-wrongness, the use of the term “megadungeon” was playfully evocative in relation to the comic in question, etc. So… yeah, naw.

“…people can sometimes, er, get a bit carried away with themselves when they’re doing their “being a writer” thing.”

Yeah, see, you might prefer it if amypoodle spent his time creating a detailed log of which bits of classical literature he has and hasn’t read, or pondering his life choices in light of your revelation that superhero comics are only “read by adults that read them as kids”, but if this is what happens when poodle gets a bit carried away, then I don’t think he has anything to worry about.

Posts like this make the comics they cover seem just that little bit more alive and interesting, and like the good little True Believer I am, I’ll keep reading them as long as Amy keeps writing them.

Is knowledge of the author really irrelevant when discussing written work? I’m sure we all know that there was once an essay written called “Death of the Author” which we were supposed to read for our humanities degrees. Perhaps we could say our attitudes are Barthesian (I’m sure many have without reading anything else he’s written or really understanding his points). But I don’t buy that.

Do people quote/reference things in order to create an effect rather than communicate accurately? I would say that this is definitely true and unfortunate.

I don’t see that not reading his post has anything in common with his reading or not of Dante or whether people really think that such references are genuinely helpful to their point. I’m not saying “Since Amypoodle’s blog on megadungeons to Saturday Superstore, man has always had an intractable…”.

So did Fungus the Bogeyman really hang out in a megadungeon, then? I honestly thought the point about him was that he lived in a house and had a sort of banal existence (but with a lot of bogeys). But I’m afraid that I do not have the text at hand.

Put it this way: I read the sentence and had no idea what a megadungeon was. After a while I thought of D+D games. But people haven’t been thinking about D+D games for all eternity, have they? So the reference didn’t work. For me.

““…people can sometimes, er, get a bit carried away with themselves when they’re doing their “being a writer” thing.”

Yeah, see, you might prefer it if amypoodle spent his time creating a detailed log of which bits of classical literature he has and hasn’t read, or pondering his life…”

Er – are those the choices?

Whatever – You (who write for this blog) want to admit no wrong in Amypoodle’s writing (on this blog). I guess you wouldn’t write here if you weren’t a fan. Fair enough.

Pretension is totally fucking awful though, isn’t it? Anything that blocks communication, serves to alienate people (even from themselves), distances words and statements from any true meaning that you can feel in your gut. That’s all I have a problem with. I’m just a bit sensitive to it.

Maybe you’ll say there was no pretension in that opening. Well – I think there was. I think that pretension is an ever-present threat. Especially among people who LOVE the idea of “being writers”.

Anyway, I didn’t say knowledge of the author was irrelevant, blah blah Barthes cakes. What I was flagging up was that Zom’s statement that “it’s the who and the how and the where of it”*was* relevant, despite your attempt to shrug it off.

“Do people quote/reference things in order to create an effect rather than communicate accurately? I would say that this is definitely true and unfortunate.”

Well, you could argue – and I would in this case – that creating an effect can be a way of communicating, no? Mr Poodle conveys the sights, the sounds and the smells of this issue quite nicely through his playful associations and colourful language, but you haven’t read the comic in question so forgive me if I don’t spend too much time worrying about your opinion of how well he succeeded on this front.

I was being a bit cheeky by drawing your not having read the full post together with your attacks on amy’s references, but I don’t think it’s as distinct as you seem to be saying. Part of your complaint was that poodle was drawing on effects from things he hadn’t (in your estimation, as his friend) read to disguise his lack of content; part of my complaint was that you were presenting a judgement on something that you hadn’t (by your own admission, as a commenter) read in full as part of an alleged attempt at helpful critique.

Fungus the Bogeyman did indeed live in a house full of bogeys and that, but he also lived underground, and while I’ve not read Raymond Briggs’ (excellent!) kids book in ages, I remember there being plenty in there that makes sense in the context amy invoked it in:

Plus, like I said before, while Briggs art doesn’t overly resemble the art in this particular Daredevil comic, the environments Fungus dwells in have a mix of cuddly warmth and cartoonish wrongness that the caves that DD navigates in the issue in question also have, so!

“Put it this way: I read the sentence and had no idea what a megadungeon was. After a while I thought of D+D games. But people haven’t been thinking about D+D games for all eternity, have they? So the reference didn’t work. For me.”

Fair dos, if it didn’t work for you then it didn’t work for you, though while I’m trying to take your complaints in earnest I do have to wonder whether you’re having a bit of deliberate fun with amy’s syntax when you start with all that stuff about how people haven’t been thinking about D&D games for eternity.

I would have thought that the word “megadungeon” would work as an enjoyable bit of hyperbole even if you *didn’t* get a D&D flavour from it, maybe that’s just me, but still – mega + dungeon = MEGADUNGEON.

And again, I was obviously being cheeky with my suggestions for what you’d rather amypoodle did with his time, but having found nothing to agree with in your assessment of the emptiness of his style, all I was left with the sense that you didn’t think he’d read enough classical literature to invoke it in this context and that you thought “this context” to be unworthy of his efforts anyway.

“You (who write for this blog) want to admit no wrong in Amypoodle’s writing (on this blog). I guess you wouldn’t write here if you weren’t a fan.”

You see this sort of argument a lot on the internet, and it makes me pretty cross because yeah, sure, I am a fan of the site or I wouldn’t write for it, but does it really follow that because I don’t agree with the criticisms you’ve put forth, I must think everything amy (or anyone else) writes for the site is perfect? No. No it does not.

“Pretension is totally fucking awful though, isn’t it? Anything that blocks communication, serves to alienate people (even from themselves), distances words and statements from any true meaning that you can feel in your gut. That’s all I have a problem with. I’m just a bit sensitive to it.”

Ach, well, you’ve already pre-empted the fact that I’m going to say that amy’s intro isn’t pretentious, but see this business about how pretension creates distance between words from gut feelings? That’s the opposite of what I get from this stuff, and – personally speaking – I’d rather the writers on this site continued to risk pretension, because pieces like his have the opposite of an alienating effect on me.

And yeah, of course, I would say that because I write here too, and if amy writes pretentiously then I *definitely* do, but I’ll stand by it all the same.

“Well, you could argue – and I would in this case – that creating an effect can be a way of communicating, no?”

Sigh. Yes. You could. It is, indeed, “a way”. To communicate something or other. Probably about yourself. Or your expectations about your audience. Or what you’re saying about yourself through your expectations about your audience. Or indeed to convey the fact, of which you have a heart-felt opinion, that megadungeons have fascinated us/the world/the author since Tiiiime Immmmemmmorial!

(So what ARE megadungeons again? Mega+dungeon= MEGADUNGEON. Oh – so they’re really brilliant dungeons. Fungus lives in a really brilliant dungeon. Which looks like a tunnel. That might lead to a cave. Or a cavern. But more megadungeony than that.

Maybe it’s a million dungeons. Can you just about fit a megadungeon on a floppy disk?)

I jest. A bit.

“I must think everything amy (or anyone else) writes for the site is perfect? No. No it does not. ”

Of course. But would you (have you) *written that here* ever? (How come you get to have bold font? Can I? If not this exchange is not fair). I’ve no idea. But I think it’s a safe bet that criticism isn’t terribly forthcoming or thought to be of value.

You ever written or said something that was a bit naff or lacking in substance in a moment of not-thinking and someone pointed it out to you? And immediately you realised they were right? Maybe you sometimes catch yourself, mid-discussion, say some cliched truism that you’ve not really thought about and realise is bollocks. It’s alright, isn’t it? Nice in fact. I love speaking and writing to people who I know will do that. Or honestly, clearly question what I’m saying.

Well I think that someone ever starting a piece with “From [insert cultural item x here] to [insert cultural item y here], [insert idea or theme z here] has, for all eternity…” is a naff (and content-light) way to start a piece. As naff as talking about frankenstein foods, Broken Britain or ending a story with “and it was all a dream”. I’d be very surprised if Amy didn’t agree with that now I pointed it out. I’d bloody hope so…

I’ve already written too much again. Shame because I’d love to really probe the reasons why comics fans always think that any criticism must only come down to snobbishness. It’s just…weird. If people think a context needs to be *worthy* of high-fallutin’ references in its criticism they are the exact kind of wrong that might lead people to do it for no good reason. My comments here have nothing to do with what I feel about super-hero comics anyway. And, for the record, there are some truly solid reasons why people would not get much out of them – none of which have to do with snobbery.

I’m reminded of the Emo Philips quote that I like:

“Why can’t we just get beyond prejudice and homophobia and racism and sexism when there are so many *good* reasons to hate people?”

That is indeed a good Emo Philips quote, but Steve – you get the bold effect by putting the word strong inside a pair of these <>, with /strong in another set when you want to stop using bold, by ra way* – I don’t really remember going on about superhero comics and snobbery here.

Most of my friends don’t read comics, and many of them would find the idea of reading a superhero comic massively uninteresting for any number of valid reasons. I’ll let you know if I start losing sleep over this so you can come round and probe me, but until then, we’re good.

I did write that “you thought “this context” to be unworthy of his [amypoodle's] efforts” because between the content of your initial complain (that poodle was referencing classical sources you didn’t think he was knowledgeable of in order to disguise a whole lot of nothing) and your subsequent comments about being uninterested in the comic in question (fair enough), and about how superhero comics are only read by adults who read them as kids (broadly true, I’d imagine, though how it followed from Papers’ comments I’m not really sure) I’d got the idea that part of the reason you thought poodle’s opening was a bit guff** was that it was trying to dress up an uninteresting subject in some nice, classical hand-me-downs.

Maybe I was wrong about that, I dunno, I just think you’re more invested in the conversation about snobbery and superhero comics than either me or the lad Papers.

As to whether I’ve criticised amypoodle or any of the other Mindless Ones in our comments section, I can’t link you to specific examples off the top of my head but I’ve disagreed over a few things, copped to a few faults in my own work, etc, for sure, and there’s a fair bit of behind the scenes critique and feedback too.

Criticism is definitely welcome here, and I always appreciate it when people catch me in the middle of something foolish – Zom tends to stomp on my sillier statements at the draft stage, for example, and I love him for it. I just found your critique to run contrary my experience of poodle’s post, and to be phrased in a slightly dickish way, is all.

Like…

“I had no idea how much classical literature you’ve read. You never mention it when I see you. You’ve apparently mentioned some stuff about Plato on here in the past and I pretty positive you’ve not read any…”

…yeah, reading over that now, it still seems pretty crotchy to me.

Anyway, I’m not really interested in going round and round about whether amypoodle’s effects were effective or not, and I’m fairly sure, given the wee “Sigh” you started off with this time, that you feel the same way. Similarly, I don’t think there’s much to be gained in going over the megadungeon thing, or the connection to Fungus the Bogeyman, in any more detail. I think they collectively bring to mind a big dungeon that’s both cosy and creepy, you think otherwise, I restate, you refute, and so on.

We can both probably do without much more of that, eh?

*Wouldn’t want to be unfair, would I? If you’re looking for italics use em instead of strong.

Re who, where and how. Well that’s me well and truly rebutted then! Su-u-ussed!

I don’t think the Dante ref is about appearing erudite or high-fallutin’ or an effort to elevate superhero comics. I think perhaps the word “eternal” tempts one into seeing it that way – I’d go along with you that it’s almost certainly a word that slipped out of a journalistic style/mode rather than a cautiously critical head*. Of course if one assumes this:

“I’d love to really probe the reasons why comics fans always think that any criticism must only come down to snobbishness.”

Then one could find oneself stuck in a particular reading of that opening sentence that isn’t entirely generous, because in that view “eternal” and Dante are clearly in there to act as a bulwark against snobbish put-downs.

But more to the point. Eh? When have I ever suggested that criticism of superhero comics is always tied to snobbishness?

If I have done that in the past – genuinely generalised in that way rather than made reference to the fact that it can sometimes be a problem – then that was obviously wrong of me. Pretty sure I haven’t, however, or at least not for a good many years.

“Perhaps the tunnel was always empty. Just Caves. Those eyes really are dead. The bellowing mouths just fissures.”

Watching 1970′s Pagan Horror For Kids ‘Children of the Stones’ at the mo and the opening credits play a similar card. Fissures as gaping maws, dead black ‘eyesockets’. Chilling stuff.

Comments threads like this make me glad I don’t know how to make comments work on Googlesites. Virtually everyone I know in real life could legitimately come and leave a little missive saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not interested in what you write about. I don’t like your writing style. You spelt something wrong” (especially the last one).

But then I could go on their Facebook page and say the same in the midst of some conversation about the Only Way is Essex couldn’t I? But why would I do that? Wouldn’t it be a bit… y’know… dickish?

Seems your ‘Superhero Horror’ article has failed to pass muster with someone who has no interest in superheroes Amy. Poor show sir, poor show…

I’d like to think we’re all more than one-dimensional ‘comics people’ (to borrow Heidi Macdonalds phrase, seemingly meaning some sort of damaged retard) and have a lots of other non-comics things we and our friends are interested in, be that music, films, 1980′s BMX’s, the Scottish Premier League or whatever. Round these parts though we tend to talk about comics. And Doctor Who. If those things don’t butter your muffin then I’m sure the internet is capable of accomodating you otherwise.

Some of my friends have had a look at my website, a probably much greater number of them have absolutely no interest at all in it. I very much doubt that any of them would visit just to tell me they didn’t like the introduction to a piece of writing that I’d done, a piece of writing they had so little interest in that they didn’t bother to read the rest of it.

A guy from my work once read a few of my Mindles Ones pieces. He told me that I was a pretty decent writer and asked why I didn’t write about something that people actualy cared about instead of all that comics shite.

He didn’t do it in the comments, for shame, but I did feel special. For a minute there.

It’s a lovely piece of writing overall and, as usual, I’m sure I enjoyed and had my imagination stirred by Amypoodle’s reflections a lot more than I would have reading the comic that it’s about.
However, apart from the fairly graceful aside about Chasms of Malice, that first sentence is a bit of a stinker.
I’m not offended by it though, as I’m sure it’s meant with a good deal of flippancy, no-one writes with their own blood about Fungus the Bogeyman. (I feel the same way about people who append their names with “…Rides Again!”)
” ____ has, for me, an eternal appeal.” is obviously a slip-up, maybe due to hurried self-editing; easily done, nevermind.

One thing though, that I can’t hold back my opinion about any longer is this:
Hell is not a megadungeon, and particularily in the Divine Comedy it isn’t.
If it was being used as an environment in a RPG scenario, it could be functionally referred to as one – the GM might have a “dungeon-map” layed out with discrete locations for hir convenience of reference etc – but outside of RPGs, and fantasy fiction culture in the wake of them, it doesn’t make much sense.
The Labyrinth of Minos could have worked, it’s a space that works the same way a game dungeon does, and it’s a very old story, to boot.
I think maybe the dungeon could be considered a sub-type of a more general topos which might loosely be called subterranea. If Poodle had used that word, though, it wouldn’t neccessarily have suggested the hero’s progress and the hidden threats.
Anyway, murky underground spaces certainly are a long-standing and powerful symbolic environment and some Jungian scholar could probably make a convincing case for their equivalence to the subconscious, especially when, as pictured above, they lead into a body of water, an absolutely classic symbol of the unconscious.

That is a very enjoyable pair of panels, yup. Not having the context for it, I’m particularily impressed by the ambiguity – are the critters “really” there and unwitnessed by the hero, or are they lurking in his imagination? Or, are they representative of a plenitude of unknowables?
Cos, like, Plato’s cave is our miinds, innit, and the puppets are, like, images, like, everything is pre-recorded, except the pre-recordings themselves, iinniiit.

Oh… I had something else to say about Dante’s paradoxical cthonic realm, but, I should probably get out of the way so that 5 or 6 members of the cavalry can berate Steve Peterson for his lack of etiquette.

“I just think you’re more invested in the conversation about snobbery and superhero comics than either me or the lad Papers”

Is that despite the fact that Papers first brought the topic by saying:

“People are allowed to draw connections between different forms of media regardless of what “brow” classification some dingus has decided they fall under, it keeps discussion fresh and reminds us not to denigrate things like, say, comics.”

Again when I had not said that. Oh – OK. I did say the bitchy (but absolutely true) thing about how superhero comics are only enjoyed by people who liked them as kids. So I very slightly carried on that thing I guess. A bit.

————————————-

Zom – “eternal” was more the naff, content-free end of things than the high-falutin’. (Bear in mind I said, and meant, “pretentious” to begin with before all the “brow” stuff came up – Fungus the Bogeyman seemed almost as pretentious)*.

And I never meant to imply that this snobby thing was something raised or mentioned by you. But when it came up I said “eh?” and then IL said…blah blah. And people do do it. Loads of them. All the time. And it happened here.

————————————-

Ben – good call! This IS dickish, isn’t it? But a bit of fun too. Me and IL are having a fucking whale of a time. He’s quite upset that this might be the end of my most recent ride.

Must pick you up on one thing, though, since you want to join in the fun:

“Seems your ‘Superhero Horror’ article has failed to pass muster with someone who has no interest in superheroes Amy. Poor show sir, poor show…”

This is a non-point. From the long-forgotten seventh comment on this comments section to the grinding, wheezing thirty-second comment, we have, for all eternity, had several instances of people not getting the point.

Anyway. Show of hands. Who still doesn’t think the opening is crap? I must have convinced a few by now…

*I STILL HAVE NO EVIDENCE THAT FUNGUS THE BOGEYMAN LIVES IN, VISITS, COMES FROM, FREQUENTS OR EVEN THINKS ABOUT MEGADUNGEONS AND UNTIL BEN ABOVE STOPS CALLING ME DICKISH AND FETCHES ME THE PROOF I WILL KEEP THIS ARGUMENT ALIVE.

Steve, come on pal, I’ve already explained why I thought you were saying that amy was trying to dress up an uninteresting subject in pretentious/classical clothing, and admitted that I might have misread you in this regard. I even quoted the section of my own comment that you’ve just quoted to me again while doing so, just to save you some effort.

The fact that you keep coming back to the Fungus the Bogeyman in the megadungeon stuff has made reading this comments thread feel like watching a sink full of dirty water that just won’t drain.* I don’t really want to add to that sensation by going over this stuff again, but:

I reckon that Papers read your comments the way I did, i.e. that he thought you were saying it was pretentious for amypoodle to reference Dante, Plato etc while writing about the adventures of Owl Men and Wander Womenz. It seems that we both misread you here, but what I still don’t get is how you get from my comment to “comics fans always think that any criticism must only come down to snobbishness”.

I wasn’t trying to defend Team Comics from the world of the badsnobs, I was suggesting that part of the reason *you* seemed overly dismissive of amy’s writing here was that *you* thought the comic discussed wasn’t worthy of attention – given that you didn’t bother to read the whole post because you had no interest in its subject, this does not seem to me to be a ridiculous assumption to have made. Possibly incorrect, but still fairly understandable, I would have thought. Also – once more with feeling – at no point did I suggest that you were a snob for not wanting to read Daredevil, or for not liking poodle’s paragraph.

Anyway, hands up, I still like amypoodle’s opening**. The use of the word eternal is maybe a little empty, sure, and Ken Quichey’s suggestion that “subterranea” would have been more fitting is intriguing, though like I said, I’ve not read Dante so can’t really comment on that side of things. Despite these two quibbles – and yes, that *is* what they are – that paragraph still warms me up for a far more exciting take on the comic in question than I’d arrived at on my own. Given that this is exactly what I got from the rest of the post, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

*It’s pretty remarkable, actually, because I’ve stopped giggling when I read the words “Fungus the Bogeyman”, and I *never* thought that would happen.

Honestly, if you keep going on about this I’m going to stare at this image til I go blind:

Well, either that or I’m going to run an AD&D campaign in which Fungus and Virgil go to hell, which turns out to be both Fungus’ house and a fuck-off megadungeon, and invite you all round to suffer through it with me.

I’m going to say something which is extremely obvious but still probably worth bearing in mind.

Yes, I am.

Here it comes.

Every one of the best, most lauded and well enjoyed bloggers, columnists, journalists, etc drops the occasional duff sentence, and one mis-step out of many, many deft formulations/observations/syntheses is not a major catastrophe.

Just look at that Matt Seneca, fer gawd’s sake!. He writes some invigorating, perceptive stuff and his enthusiasm is infectious because it’s well expressed and lucidly anchored to genuine insights. But that very enthusiasm sometimes (almost every week) pushes out of him such complete and utter bullshit – along the lines of “You could say that Curt Swan doesn’t create amazing art, but you could say that about Leonardo DaVinci or Michelangelo, G-dawg!!!” – that I wonder what gets into him. The bad stuff in his writing makes me chuckle, but it in no way overwhelms the good stuff. So, he makes some silly goofs, and I reckon he makes them far more often than any other arts-blogger I could name, his writing is still, for me, universally appealling.

It’s not something to worry too much about, that’s all I’m saying.
That somebody makes a bad sentence, or that somebody else points out what’s wrong with it.

It’s only one sentence, it’s allowed to be bad, it’s a maverick sentence, takin’ chances so the other sentences can see what happens.

This is all starting to make me feel very self-conscious. I really appreciate all the nice things being said about the above done-in-an-afternoon post, and I also appreciate the first sentence was a bit naff, but I’d like this conversation to go away now. I’ve already got the prospect of Steve going on at me about this ad infinitum next time I see him hanging over my head, something I absolutely do not relish, and all of this is just more grist to his mill.

I don’t think that anyone would argue the fact that all writers have their duff moments. The defensiveness sprung up because Steve turned up with a relatively snarky dismissive attacke on someone who he knows in real life (and chose to let everyone know that by using Amy’s real life code name – which, in my opinion, was an ill-judged and fairly mean spirited thing to do). The ensuing debate has proved that, by golly, everone still has their degrees and know how to use them, and has actually proved somewhat entertaining. Nonetheless the point still stands – Steve’s criticism may well have been valid, or at least contained traces of validity. The way he chose to express it was dickish. And the idea that it wasn’t done to wind people up is disengenous at best.

Whether or not we agree with anything you’ve written isn’t the point, Steve. I’ve said since the beginning that it’s not the criticism that’s the problem (as Ken’s demonstrated). The fact is that all of us think you’ve behaved like an arse and that can’t be cured or altered by more arsey behaviour, i.e. twenty minutes (it will be longer) of extremely tedious and cross-making ranting.

Because that *is* what we’re going to get, and that *is* how we’re all going to feel about it. Sorry.

“Whether or not we agree with anything you’ve written isn’t the point, Steve”

So shall I put you down as an abstention then?

It remains 2-1. I’m pretty sure I’m going to win this vote…

“I’ve said since the beginning that it’s not the criticism that’s the problem”

Err…or the exact total opposite. Or something.

“Because that *is* what we’re going to get, and that *is* how we’re all going to feel about it. Sorry.”

Tarkovskian neutrinos, Batman! No need to apologise!

Ken Quichey is not a nice man. He showed me this entry. He knew I would not be able to hold my tongue. It’s him! He’s the bad guy!

And believe me, Zom – you do NOT completely agree with him.

(Stevie P stops running round the paddock making neighing noises, holding pretend reins and slapping his own arse*. He jumps over the fence and leaves the locals looking, with suspicion and menace, at the man Quichey).

Whoa I wanna dance with somebody, I wanna feel the heat with somebody, yeah I wanna dance with somebody, with somebody who loves me.

Steve Peterson stop being such a massive cunt muscle. You’re public critism is about as ‘helpful’ to your pals as my marriage to Bobby Brown. Now have a poo, eat your muesli and listen to one of my albums.

It’s not the criticism, it’s how and where you’ve* done it. I didn’t flesh that point out straight away, but I started in that direction pretty sharpish. You know this.

I probably should’ve said “harsh” instead of “tough” in my second comment, but I used a qualifier quite deliberately in an effort to highlight the fact that I wasn’t objecting to criticism fullstop, or indeed the substance of your criticism. I don’t entirely disagree with you, and I don’t entirely agree with you – so yes an abstention on that point is probably how it should be marked up on the League of Debate Masters tally chart.

I agree with most of what Evil Ken has written here.

*The fact that it’s *you* offering the harsh crit isn’t trivial, as much as I’m sure you think it aught to be**, everyone’s being terribly silly, etc…

**Which, if true, is curious because you put a lot of your personality into your comments so on some level you recognise that people are responding to you and how you come across as much as they’re responding to the substance of what you’ve written, which kind of brings us back to my point

I dunno, it depends I suppose on whether announcing yourself as a close friend of the ‘author’ and then proceeding to just be publically criticial of their work whilst openly expressing a lack of interest in the forum they’ve created is enthusiastic, helpful and supportive or not?

O.K so I’ve spent the last almost 4 hours reflecting on this and I’m clearly just being a bit of arse. Apologies to all, just very bored and had some bad news this morning about my pet hampster. It seems it’s going to have to be put down due to some sort of sugar related virus. Anyway, no excuse to take it out on my friends and to turn this into an episode of One Foot in the Top Gear.

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